The presently described invention relates to containers for storing and dispensing consumer products. The term consumer products is intended to cover a wide variety of products as illustrated by the following (non-exhaustive) list: foods, either for immediate consumption, pre-cooked, prepared or oven ready, including prepared meals, confectionary, hardware and DIY items, cosmetics, seeds, animal and fish feeds, electronic components, medical appliances and dressings, medicines and medication such as pills, tablets and capsules.
The containers may be used in place of conventional blister packs for the packaging of pills, tablets or capsules, or may be used for organising and storing mixed medication for subsequent dispensation according to a predefined dosage regimen. The principle behind such mixed medication containers is that a dosage regimen of mixed medication can be organised in advance for a period of a week or more, and a patient or nurse can then remove from the container, at predefined times over the said period, the one or more pills, tablets and/or capsules to be administered on each occasion according to the dosage regimen.
Blister packs are of course well known for the storage and dispensing of pills, tablets and capsules, which are stored individually in cavities in a multi-cavity tray and removed by pushing each pill, tablet or capsule through a rupturable film (that is, a film that is capable of being ruptured) or foil covering the cavities. The film or foil cover may be paper or a plastics film that can be peeled or torn away to expose the medication in the tray cavities, but is generally aluminium foil, which has the dual advantage of being easily rupturable and vapor-impermeable. Such blister packs normally carry only one unit dose of the same medication in each cavity.
Mixed medication blister packs have been proposed, having larger cavities for filling by a pharmacist, wherein each cavity in a multi-cavity tray can be filled with a mixture of medications. Typically, a tray may have a 2×7, 3×7, 4×7 or 5×7 array of cavities corresponding to 2, 3, 4 or 5 predefined medication times per day over a 7-day period, or one dose prescribed per day over a 2, 3, 4 or 5 week period. For example, a 4×7 tray may be filled with the medication to be taken at breakfast-time, lunchtime, early evening and immediately before retiring each day for a week, and then the filled cavities sealed with a rupturable or sequentially removable film or foil cover. Printed instructions on the pack identify the intended sequence of opening the individual cavities to dispense their contents according to the prescribed dosage regimen. Disadvantages of the above blister packs which use a rupturable foil cover sheet are the difficulty experienced by some patients, particularly the elderly, in pushing the medication through a foil cover sheet to rupture the cover sheet, the need for expensive laminating equipment to seal an aluminium foil cover sheet over the cavities after initial filling, and the difficulty experienced by the user in selecting the cavity containing the medication to be dispensed if the medication is pushed up through the foil from below. If the wrong cavity is opened, then re-sealing is impossible because the foil has ruptured.
A major disadvantage of the above blister pack using a peelable film cover sheet is the difficulty experienced by the user of peeling or tearing away a single selected portion of the cover sheet to expose the contents of only one preselected cavity. This can be achieved by scraping a finger-nail over a corner or tab portion of a segment of the cover sheet sealing the preselected cavity, but grasping that corner to peel away the complete segment sometimes requires considerable manual dexterity and possibly good eyesight, which may be beyond the abilities of many elderly consumers. Also, if a tacky peelable adhesive is used to adhere the cover sheet to the tray, it is desirable to prevent the contents of the tray from coming into contact with the adhesive. Finally, the film cover sheet may not have as high a vapor impermeability as metal foil, so there is a reluctance on the part of pharmacists to pre-fill a mixed medication blister pack with medication for administration more than seven days in advance of the filling date, lest the medication deteriorates due to storage in humid ambient conditions.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,294,361 to Margulies et al. discloses a dispensing container for storing and dispensing medication that includes a tray 10 having a generally planar top surface and one or more discrete cavities. A cover film 14 is secured to the top surface of the tray to seal the cavities. The cover film 14 is provided with pre-formed tear lines 20 and 26 that extend around three sides of each of an array of second cavities 18 but not around the discrete cavities 12 for containing the tablets or capsules. At the time when the cover film 14 is secured to the top surface of the tray 10, the second cavities 18 are in the position shown in FIG. 2 where they extend away from the cover film 14 on the same side of the top surface as the discrete cavities 12. The second cavities 18 are collapsible and can be manually inverted by a consumer to the position shown in FIG. 3 of Margulies et al. to rupture the cover film 14 along the tear lines 20 and 26. This forms a lug portion 22 that can be grasped and then used to remove the part of the cover film that overlies the associated cavity 12. The purpose of Margulies et al. is therefore to provide a dispensing container that incorporates features to make it difficult for children to gain access to the medication. However, the need for the second cavities 18 to be manually inverted by the consumer before the medication can be properly dispensed means that the dispensing container of Margulies et al. suffers from the same disadvantages as the conventional blister packs mentioned above, namely it requires considerable manual dexterity that may be beyond the abilities of many elderly consumers.
Prepared meals are commonly sold in packaging containers comprising a heat resistant tray and an open-ended sleeve made of a suitable food grade boxboard. The tray is normally sealed with a peelable film or foil cover. A major disadvantage of these packaging containers is the difficulty which consumers can experience when trying to remove the cover. The difficulties are particularly acute if the prepared meal has been heated and the packaging container is hot.